41st World Communications Day Homily

Homily of Most Reverend Antonio J. Ledesma, SJ, DD
Archbishop of Cagayan de Oro City
41^st World Communications Day (May 20, 2007)

This afternoon, we are celebrating a special mass for World Communication Sunday on Ascension Day which is celebrated in the liturgy of the church, and the theme is about; “Children and the Media: a Challenge for Education”.

We are glad to see many representatives of the media channels, and organizations who are here with us; we are also glad to see the children that performed earlier and have done some of the readings and are here also are their parents.

In many ways, the role of media and our upbringing of children are two folds in the educational process, and this is what the message of the Holy Father that was pictured earlier meant for reading today reminds us that we are concerned of our first, the formation of children, but also with our concern about the responsibility of media in the formation of children.

In one sense, the little ones with us in our homes, in our communities have a very small world to live in. They depend directly on the love they share with their parents, and brothers and sisters and their world rose as they move on in their school.

On the other side, we have the media, people in the press, the radio, on tv, now on internet and they have the whole wide world before them. It is they who come and through the various media sources and channels they enter the hook through the tv set, radio, through the newspaper, through the computer and it is they that also helped in the formation of our children. Someone had said that in the past the education of humanity took place first in the two, then as man began to progress we also have the schools, the academes, that in the history of the church, the church itself became of a ripper of the young and even today as we come together every Sunday or everyday and as we listen to the word of God, this educational process within the church continues. But now, in our modern age, it is really man’s immediate that it has reach out to the corners of the globe and that it has reach out to the most intimate part of our voice that seems to be persuasive and in a sense for better or for worse the media are also the molders of the education of the young.

So it is on this sense that we have two pictures given us in this message of the Holy Father, perhaps contrasting, the embracing arms of Jesus around the little children as it go even to His apostles not to prevent the little ones to come to Him. But the contrast is its own warning about those who cause scandal to the little ones how it will be better for them to be thrown into the deep with the mill stone around their neck. In many ways, the scandal that we can also provide in terms of the wrong kind of information and the wrong kind of influence is a heart that is done to the little ones, and it is in this sense that the concern of our Lord, and the concern of the church is also the great mind, the great responsibility, and the great task of people in media today to help in the formation of the little ones.

In many ways, the church itself is communication, we are ask to share the gospel which literally means the good news, and this is what we keep on repeating in our readings, in our reflections during homily time, in our worship to share the good news of Gods love for all of us, to share the good news that God said “yes” to humanity, to share the good news that human dignity, the work of every human person starts first in our care for our children an as they grow up to bring to fullness the meaning of human dignity as they exercise the fullness of their physical and spiritual powers. And it is in this sense that you as parents or as teachers or as people in media or even as members of the church can help in the formation of the little ones.

It is a noble task; it is the way that our Lord invited the apostles themselves especially during this day of Ascension when going up to heaven in that word that the apostles themselves remit on earth to be become witnesses of God presence of the divine in all of us. The search for what is true, and what is good, and what is beautiful, continues in our call daily lives, and in our call daily communication with one another. Hopefully, those in the mass media can multiply this communication of what is indeed true, what is indeed good, and what is indeed beautiful, not only for the little ones but for all of us.

May this invitation then of World Communications Day and Ascension Sunday remind us that we and you, as parents as educators, and members of media profession exercise a very noble profession of sharing the good news of Gods love for each one of us.